As the central figures in a booming theater industry, actresses in nineteenth-century France were granted the resources and freedoms to forge a powerful if unsuspectingly subversive voice. Comediennes were adulated as talented and beautiful women bringing fame and fortune to the stages of Paris yet were also legally and socially marginalized because of lingering Rousseauean conceptions of female performers as deceptive prostitutes. From this position outside mainstream society, the power of actresses to challenge norms from both on and off the stage went largely unrecognized. They had a profound effect on other women of the time who were as riveted as the men by the audacious personal lives, unconventional manners, independence, and difference of these new stars. Actresses' ability to convincingly adopt one role and then another and to juxtapose conflicting personas undermined the concept that certain attributes belong exclusively to a specific gender, class, or age. With the growing success of the French theater industry, portrayals of actresses seemed to be everywhere---in the memoirs of Sarah Bernhardt and other celebrated performers, in the journals of the Goncourt brothers, in the photographs of Nadar, and in the literary works of such authors as Ajalbert, Balzac, Baudelaire, Champsaur, Leroux, Maupassant, Merimee, Nerval, Rodenbach, Villiers, and Zola. Attempts to portray their identities accurately, however, whether in fiction or in life, were continually betrayed by the many, often contradictory roles they played. Revealing little about the actresses who were their ostensible subjects, these representations reveal much, on the other hand, about the fears and desires of the writers: if the actress provided for many a convenient blank screen onto which one could project one's fantasies, she also functioned as a mirror (perhaps as a Lacanian mirror) that revealed hidden societal truths and exerted a profound influence over broader conceptions of identity. Whether consciously or not, the nineteenth-century French actress raised critical questions of identity and representation, questions that continue to be explored in the highly conscious work of contemporary feminist filmmakers.

This dissertation examines an anti-West and anti-humane role played by China in the works of Claudel, Segalen, Malraux, Michaux and Sollers. I argue that the search for different values in China makes their works a homogenous discourse, which reflects the crisis in subjectivity and in language in modern Western society. China serves as a reference in criticizing Western humanistic tradition, and also offers a model of "deja-la moderne" in the search for a new aesthetic, in an age of token-language (Jean-Joseph Goux, 1984). Thus, focusing on the inadequacy of the Western heritage rather than on Western power over the other, this discourse reveals some features that Edward Said failed to discuss in his Orientalism (1978). In part one, I first outline the motifs in the praise of the Chinese writing by Claudel, Michaux and Segalen, and point out the connection between their admiration of Chinese sign and the development of a no-representative aesthetic. Then I look at the ways in which those writers bring Chinese writing in their works. I argue that their effort to create the effect of simultaneity of signs intends to break with the linear constraints of writing. It also leads to the emergence of an anti-ideological "ecriture" in Sollers' works that completely breaks with the representative literature. In part two, I discuss Segalen's expectation of a "transfer from the Empire of China to the empire of self", and Malraux's rejection of the oriental wisdom in his search for a new concept of man. I also examine whether Segalen, who insists on the search for a secret self, or Claudel, who dedicates himself to the glory of God, turn of God, turn to the Taoist notion of emptiness, which leads to the break with the Cartesian cogito. Finally, I focus on the two different stages of Sollers's use and depiction of China. From revolution to "no action", China is linked to his dream of an anti-West "logical turn-over" that comes true, in his later works, in an individualized, yet emptied space.

El presente trabajo es un estudio sobre los personajes femeninos en las novelas de Miguel de Unamuno. Partiendo de la premisa unamuniana, "todo ser de ficcion ... que crea un autor hace parte del autor mismo," proponemos que las protagonistas femeninas en La tia Tula y San Manuel Bueno, martir representan aspectos importantes de la personalidad de Unamuno. Se observa que atraves de estas dos mujeres Unamuno se analiza a si mismo y que gracias a ellas el puede explorar posibles soluciones a sus preocupaciones personales. El objetivo principal de este trabajo es atribuir a los personajes femeninos unamunianos una mayor importancia en la filosofia y en la ficcion de su creador.

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The present work is a study of metafictional aspects in three novels of Miguel de Unamuno. The first chapter provides a definition of metafiction and positions the idea of metafiction within the Spanish novel. This fictional concept is traced through the history of the Spanish novel beginning with its first appearance through its manifestation within the novels of Unamuno. In the second chapter, Unamuno's narrative style is described. The focus is placed on the author's own theory of the novel and on the metafictional elements of his style which illustrate him as an innovative novelist. A relevant way to understand the metafictional aspects in Unamuno's narrative is to analyze the fictional techniques that reflect the idea of metafiction in Niebla, Como se hace una novela, and San Manuel Bueno, martir. The function of the techniques is discussed in order to understand the innovations which Unamuno presents in these novels.

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